Abstract:
in: Olson, G.M., Zimmermann, A. und Bos, N. (Hg.): Scientific Collaboration on the Internet, 2008, Cambridge/MA-London: MIT Press, 33-49
Since the early 1980s, the scholarly community has been witnessing a considerable increase in the use of information and communication technologies ( ICTs). The networked personal computer, e-mail, the Internet, off- and online databases, the World Wide Web, electronic publications, discussion lists and newsgroups, electronic conferences, digital libraries, and ‘‘knowbots’’ are but a few of the trends that increasingly influence the daily work of the scientific community. As opposed to ‘‘traditional’’ science and research, which is done without networked computers, cyberscience designates the use of these ICT-based applications and services for scientific purposes. The increasing use of ICT in academia had, has, and will have manifold impacts on academic institutions, the daily work of researchers, the science publication system, and last but not least, the substance of research. This chapter, which examines many of these issues, is based on a major project on cyberscience that investigated how ICT affects the organization, practice, and products of science ( Nentwich 2003; the study’s conceptual framework is described in Nentwich 2005).
In this chapter, I first discuss the notion of cyberscience as opposed to related notions (such as e-Science). Following that, I present and examine in more detail the results of my research on collaboration among scholars and scientists in the age of cyberscience. This includes the following topics: results from a cross-disciplinary comparison; the impact of ICT on the spatial layout of research; the promises and limits of virtual conferencing; the increase of collaboration and the emergence of new collaboration patterns; and new infrastructure requirements. In my concluding remarks, I address the often-heard idea of the dematerialization of research.